OT: Rating the President

[rextorres]

Well this chart is income tax this chart does NOT include Social Security tax.

Rush (conveniently) forgets to mention that everyone pays 8.9% of their income to Social Security for the first 77k of income so the %s are deceptive. So someone making $20K pays ~ $1900 BEFORE deductions and 40K pays $3800 BEFORE deductions and someone making $1million pays 77K x 8.9% (whatever that is). There are a lot more people making less than 77k.

All this is supposed to go to Social Security and theoretically your supposed to get that back when you retire BUT it is all being lumped together together in the general fund to pay for non social security line items (that is what the lock box is all about BTW for those of you who don't know) - so Rush's figure is partly right because even though it seems like the wealthy are paying a huge amount more - they are not.

So since the tax cut applies only to income tax not Social Security tax someone making 20k doesn't get any tax cut but still pays the same rate of 8.9% for social security. Someone making a million dollars gets a 3%(?) tax cut.

Voila the millionaire subsidy.

EDIT: If the resident had been sincere about giving "the people back their money" he would have also lowered the Social Security tax but he didn't. Why not? The Social Security tax is 44% of revenue AND is mostly paid by lower income people.

[ February 05, 2003, 23:40: Message edited by: rextorres ]